Society's ChildS


Cell Phone

Samsung Note 7 phones to be banned from all airlines even if switched off

Mary Schlangenstein and Alan Levin
Bloomberg
Fri, 14 Oct 2016 10:22 UTC
samsung note 7
Airline passengers who try to carry Samsung Electronics Co. Note 7 smartphones on flights will have them confiscated and may face fines under an emergency U.S. order that significantly expands restrictions on the devices linked to almost 100 incidents of overheating and fires.

The devices won't be allowed aboard passenger or cargo aircraft even if they've been shut off, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday. Flight restrictions will be extended to each of the 1.9 million Note 7s sold in the U.S. starting at noon New York time on Saturday.

"We recognize that banning these phones from airlines will inconvenience some passengers, but the safety of all those aboard an aircraft must take priority," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. "We are taking this additional step because even one fire incident in flight poses a high risk of severe personal injury and puts many lives at risk."
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Attention

'Unconstitutional': Florida Supreme Court strikes down death penalty legislation


RT
Fri, 14 Oct 2016 19:01 UTC
Florida death penalty
© Stephen Lam / Reuters
The fates of 385 inmates sitting on death row in Florida, as well as those about to go on trial for murder, is in limbo - Florida's top court declared the state's death penalty statute unconstitutional.

By a 5-2 vote the Florida Supreme Court struck down a newly enacted state law allowing a defendant to be sentenced to death as along as 10 out of 12 jurors recommended it.

"The Act ... is unconstitutional because it requires that only ten jurors recommend death as opposed to the constitutionally required unanimous, twelve-member jury," the court wrote on Friday striking down the law for pending prosecutions in the state, according to Orlando Sentinel. "Accordingly, it cannot be applied to pending prosecutions."

Comment: See also: More proof the drug war is not over: Death penalty for heroin dealers?

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Stop

Buckeye State announces plans to stop doing business with Wells Fargo


RT
Sat, 15 Oct 2016 03:53 UTC
Wells Fargo
© Rick Wilking / Reuters
Ohio Governor John Kasich became the first state-level Republican to take action against Wells Fargo after suspending the big bank from doing business with the state. This makes the Buckeye State the third to officially halt business with the bank.

The Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal continues to rock the bank and jeopardize its business dealings. After allegations against the San Francisco-based bank revealed that employees had opened up unauthorized customer accounts to reach sales targets, the fallout resulted in Wells Fargo losing the ability to work with state bonds.

Governor Kasich (R) said in a statement, "while Wells Fargo only does limited retail banking in Ohio, it does regularly seek state bond business so I have instructed my administration to seek services from other banks instead."

Comment: See also: OSHA accused of neglecting federal whistleblowers' rights and protection

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TV

Reality TV hits all time low: Porn actor opens 'porn university' that coaches hopefuls

Jennifer Szulman
New York Daily News
Tue, 06 Oct 2015 01:22 UTC
hard academy
© Siffredi Hard Academy
An Italian porn actor and director is starting an academy to teach aspiring adult film actors and actresses the tricks of the trade — and aptly names his training session "Porn University."

Rocco Siffredi — nicknamed the "Italian Stallion" — will document his training in the reality show, "Universita del Porno," to air in Italy, Perfil.com reports.

Classes will be in session on the set of "Siffredi Hard Academy," in which the porn veteran will instruct a group of 21 hopefuls on different techniques and tactics on how to be a believeable porn actor on screen.

Comment: As if the world of porn wasn't bad enough, now it is being advertised on reality TV as something for young men and women to aspire to. Porn advocates may argue that the sex on screen is consensual and celebrates choice, however the evidence against porn far outweighs the deluded and deranged arguments for it. Mary Anne Layden of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in sexual trauma says in this article that 'pornography has been a factor in every case of sexual violence that she has treated as a psychotherapist.' Porn is anti-feminist, anti-human and most of all kills love. For further reading:

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Heart - Black

'I thought I might die': Cop pepper sprays woman in restraint chair

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 09:58 UTC
amber swink pepper spray
"I thought I might die," said Amber Swink of her harrowing experience being pepper-sprayed while in a seven-point restraint chair in the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton, Ohio, on November 15, 2015.

Video footage of the torturous incident shows Swink so tightly restrained in the chair, she is hardly able to move her head; but that didn't stop Sgt. Judith L. Sealey from entering the isolation cell and unleashing pepper-spray in the 25-year-old's face — at near point-blank range — for seemingly no reason but sadistic pleasure.

Swink acknowledged to the Washington Post she had, indeed, been drinking heavily at home that evening when police arrested her, and was still somewhat intoxicated when cameras recorded what happened. But she doesn't understand what brought on the senseless attack.

"It felt like somebody just crushed up fresh peppers and made me use them as face cream," Swink told the Post. "It took my breath away. You're fighting for air. I remember my mouth was filling with a thick slobber, like foaming up — and that was also blocking my airway."
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Video

'Do Not Resist' Documentary Confronts Frightening Militarization of American Police

Jordan Riefe
Truthdig
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
Do not resist
© Youtube
In the days following last year's Charleston church shooting, in which nine African-Americans were murdered by a white supremacist, an armored vehicle rolled up to a modest home in nearby Richland County, S.C. Fifteen SWAT team cops in body armor jumped out and smashed the windows of the house.

"Can you do shit like that?" the homeowner asked one of the cops. "I mean, we gotta pay for the fucking windows? That's some shit right there." Acting on an anonymous tip about a drug lord, the police found less than a gram of weed in the bottom of a book bag and arrested the homeowner's 22-year-old son, a student at nearby Denmark Technical College.

"He was supposed to be a drug kingpin. Come to find out he was there with his mom and dad, sister and her 4-month-old baby," said filmmaker Craig Atkinson, whose new documentary, "Do Not Resist," addresses the militarization of law enforcement. The film currently is playing in New York theaters and opens in Los Angeles Friday, with other markets to follow.

Such pointless raids were the norm rather than the exception in about a half a dozen ride-alongs on which Atkinson and his crew went. But while the cops found almost no drugs, they did seize $876 through a controversial policing practice known as civil asset forfeiture.
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Red Flag

Yemen's forgotten war: The tiny bodies ravaged by starvation

Neil Connery
itv.com
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 20:36 UTC
Yemen's starving children
© itv.comSaida's brother Ali says all she does is cry.
Saida is 18-months-old but she looks less than half that age. Her tiny body ravaged by starvation, she lies motionless and expressionless in her brother's arms.

"We have nothing to give her," said Ali. "She has diarrhoea and she's vomiting. All she does is cry. She's just limp like this all the time."

One-year-old Younis is also wasting away. His father Omar says he is scared his son will not survive. "What can we do" he asks, "who can help us? We have nothing, nothing at all".

They come from a village of Toheita, a community of fishermen and farmers in one of Yemen's poorest districts but nothing they have suffered in the past comes close to this.

The United Nations says there are 240 children in this village alone with severe malnutrition. Many have died, starved to death within sight of one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Comment: Read more about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen:
There are some 370,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition that weakens their immune system, and 1.5 million more suffer from malnutrition, according to UNICEF. The effects of war can be seen in Thawra hospital, where parents come seeking help for their starving and dying children. In April, 10-20 children a month were taken there, and figure has increased almost tenfold over the past few months. The center now sees about 120 small patients per month.

The UN delivers emergency food aid for four million people every month, O'Brien added, but they need to send even more.


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Cell Phone

Women prefer smartphones to partners

Hatty Collier
EveningStandard
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
woman smartphone
© Huffington Post UK
Women spend more time on their smartphones than they do with their partners, new research has found. Checking emails, sending texts and spending time on social media means women spend an average of 12 hours more a week on their phones than with a loved one, according to a survey.

If people are unable to access their phones, it can lead to stress, anger and panic, researchers claimed. On honeymoon, more than a quarter of adults admitted to using their phones to check personal emails, half said they would check social media and almost one in ten will check their work emails.

The study by Bausch + Lomb Ultra contact lenses found that a fifth of those who took part would find it harder to be without a phone for a week than their partner.

Psychologist Chireal Shallow told The Sun: "All of this interaction and addiction with our digital devices creates problems for our eyes. More than half say their eyes feel tired at the end of the day."

Comment: As society continues to move towards personal isolation and social interaction via device interface, it becomes more mechanical and removed from true experience.

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Laptop

Facebook-backed school software raises privacy concerns by parents for students

Emma Brown, Todd C. Frankel
The Washington Post
Tue, 11 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
basecamp
© dumbfunded
Caroline Pollock Bilicki felt uneasy about the new education program introduced this year at her children's Chicago school. Summit Basecamp, built with the help of Facebook engineers, was billed as a powerful tool that could reshape how students learn. Dozens of schools nationwide have signed up to use the program, which tailors lessons to individual students using software that tracks their progress.

But it also captures a stream of data, and Bilicki had to sign a consent form for her children to participate, allowing their personal data to be shared with companies such as Facebook and Google. That data, the form said, could include names, email addresses, schoolwork, grades and Internet activity. Summit Basecamp promised to limit its use of the information — barring it from being used, for example, to deliver targeted ads — but Bilicki agonized over whether to sign the form. "I'm not comfortable with having my kids' personally identifiable information going to I don't even know where, to be used for I'm not sure what," she said.
Summit PLP chart
© Summit Public SchoolsSummit's Personalized Learning Platform shows where a student is in the year-long learning plan. Blue rectangles represent cognitive skill projects. Green rectangles represent "power focus areas," or discrete concepts for students to learn.
A joint project of Facebook and the high-performing charter-school network Summit Public Schools, Basecamp is an example of an increasingly popular education trend — data-driven "personalized learning." Its most fervent backers have framed it as the next big thing in education, re-imagining how classrooms work and allowing teachers to reach students across a wide spectrum.

Comment: Parents questioning the system and its ability to overstep are doing their job.

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Microscope 2

No definitive DNA test ever conducted on Bill 'Clinton son'

Jerome R. Corsi
WND
Tue, 11 Oct 2016 18:09 UTC
Side-by-side of Bill Clinton and Danney Williams
Side-by-side of Bill Clinton and Danney Williams.
As Clinton allies fend off renewed charges that Bill Clinton is a rapist, another old accusation is resurfacing, this time from a 30-year-old black man who claims the former president is his father.

Clinton defenders contend the tabloid Star Magazine conducted a "DNA showdown" proving Bill Clinton was not Danney Williams' father, citing Star Magazine editor Phil Bunton saying at the time, "There was no match, nothing even close."

But in an interview Tuesday morning, Bunton told WND that no blood sample was obtained from Clinton and Star Magazine never published a story documenting a laboratory test.

"I don't remember ever seeing any laboratory test that was done on Clinton's DNA," Bunton told WND.

Bunton is now the owner of the Rivertown Magazine in Haverstraw, New York.

Comment: More on this story:
The man claiming to be Bill Clinton's abandoned son says that he has promised his five children that they will meet the former President - their 'grandfather' - one day.

Danney Williams, 30, uploaded a new video to YouTube on Tuesday in which he says he regularly tells his children that Clinton is his father.

'Recently I have been telling my kids that their grandfather was the president of the United States and they're amazed by it, they're like "No. Is it for real?" I tell them yes, he is my father and I will make sure you get to meet him one day,' he says in the video.

He also says that growing up, his family would receive 'seven $100 bills' each month by mail, but it all stopped when Clinton became president.

At one point in the video Williams said he got no help from the Clintons during his upbringing, but at another he says his mother regularly got 'seven $100 bills' placed in her mailbox and he received Christmas presents from the former first family.

Williams has long claimed that his prostitute mother met Clinton when she was working on the streets of Little Rock, Arkansas. He claims she told him they had sex 13 times.

He said that it's 'unfair' that Clinton has not welcomed him into his life, but that their relationship was 'common knowledge' as he grew up in Arkansas.

'I have no doubt that I am Bill Clinton's son,' he said. 'It was common knowledge, everyone in Arkansas knew.

'Everywhere I went, they pointed out: 'It's Bill Clinton's son right there. You look like him, don't you? The ears, the mouth, the chin, the teeth, the eyes, the nose'. I see him in me.

'You can see a black Bill Clinton. When I'm brushing my hair I can see Bill Clinton with waves in his hair.

'I always feel bad about him not wanting to be in my life. Was it because I was black? Was there something wrong with me? Why do you not want to be a part of me? It made me even think of sometimes suicide.'

Williams claimed to have had several near-miss attempts to speak to the Clintons. He once went to hear a speech Bill was giving at his presidential library in Little Rock but arrived too late. Just this year during a campaign stop he said he sat front and center as Hillary spoke, but she left immediately afterwards so he didn't get a chance to speak to her.

'I put myself right in front of the podium where she spoke. She was looking right at me — eye contact. I was thinking she knew who I was.'

What made it even more galling was the fact she spoke about meeting members of the Black Lives Matter movement and how she felt for them.

'It made me wonder. She says black lives matter, so why I don't matter to her?

In a separate statement Williams denied he was coming forward now for political reasons. 'This is not about politics or money,' he said. 'For me, it is about finding the truth and understanding finally who I am and where I came from.'

Turning to the camera he pleaded with Hillary Clinton to stop ignoring him.

'Hillary, please do not deny I exist, I am your stepson. Chelsea is my sister and Bill is my father.'

He then added: 'I feel bad when Hillary called black people super-predators and that we need to be brought to heel. I'm black, I'm real and I am her stepson and I deserve the love that she has given Chelsea.

'We hear my stepmother telling the nation every day that we are stronger together. They know who I am, I know who I am, I have to meet my father, I have to know that he's willing to even accept me. I have to know.


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